Panasonic DMR-EZ27 DVD Recorder

First of all, the reason I bought this product was to off-load "tivoed" recordings from my DVR's hard drive. If my cable company had offered something with both a DVR and DVD recorder to rent, then that's what I would have gone with. Since I have to use the cable company's set-top box, I figured why bother with a HDD + DVD recorder all-in-one? Especially since with their DVR, I can offload stuff to the DVD recorder while I'm watching something else. I had also considered buying a computer with a TV tuner and DVD recording drive to handle this, but decided that a stand-alone box would be easy enough for my wife to use in case I'm deployed and just have to have her mail the latest episodes of "Heroes" to me.

So, after approximately 3 months of owning this product, all I've done with it is record from the DVR, record from an external VCR, and I've recorded some home movies from my MiniDV camera using the Firewire link. I don't have HD cable nor have I tried tuning HD over the air. I don't have any components that could test the HDMI output. I would think that if I really wanted to record HD TV (assuming that's legal), I'd probably want a Blue-Ray or HDDVD recorder, but those are way out of my price range. Also, I am using a 27" CRT TV as a display, so my picture quality looks very nice, but may not match the results of someone with a 54" LCD or plasma. Also I don't have a receiver with digital input (yet) so I can only verify the analog audio.

Overall it has met most of my expectations. Here are some of my findings:

1. Given my TV, the quality of DVD recordings is very good and sharp.
2. I have a Sony MiniDV camcorder and have had no trouble recording via the Firewire input, you just have to make sure the camera is set to stream DV and is on pause before you try to press Record on the Toshiba.
3. I've not tried playing MP3s on it. CDs work fine.
4. The unit does make some disc noise from time to time, but nothing more than I've heard from a desktop computer optical drive.
5. Product build quality looks good overall and supplied remote is good too. It is slightly annoying that the cover for the DVD drawer covers up the power button when the door is open.
6. A Sample DVD-RAM media would have been good to include, to test those advanced recording features.
7. I really like the Flexible Recording feature - just set it to however long your recording is, press Start (on screen menu) and forget about it! Of course, this only works when you want one recording on your disc.
8. I've recorded on both DVD-R and DVD+R, it seems to prefer DVD+R slightly because the finalization times are much faster. Also when you record to DVD+R you can fast-forward much faster than with DVD-R. With DVD-R, fast forward seems to crawl even at 200X.
9. Would have liked a "sliding bar" like my DVR's to pop up when in fast forward or rewind mode. As it is, you have to press a button on the remote twice to get an on-screen time window to pop-up. It's a lot more difficult to figure out where you are in a recording using X:XX:XX instead of a graphical representation like a sliding bar.
10. Prior to finalization, even with a DVD-R or DVD+R, the title menu will show the first few seconds of the title plus audio, which is nice. I don't know why it won't do this once the discs are finalized.
11. I've had no trouble with Record Pause, it reacts very quickly and reliably. The "Rec" indicator on the box will flash while it is in pause mode, then goes steady once you start recording again.